Hummason, Joel J.

Military Service: Hummason served as a private from August 24 to November 11, 1812, in Captain Asa Hutchins' Company, 3rd (Hayes') Regiment, Ohio Militia, during the War of 1812. Capt. Hutchins' company contained many men from Vienna Township, including Hummason's future employer, clockmaker Lambert W. Lewis.[1]

Hummason was the son of Joel and Ann Wheeler Hummason, two of the earliest Connecticut settlers in the Township. He married Thankful Ford (1791-1868) on December 11, 1811.[2]

ClockmakerHummason worked for another of Vienna's clockmakers, Lambert W. Lewis, in 1817, before he entered into a partnership with Abel Tyler.

According to historian Rebecca M. Rogers, the location of the Tyler and Hummason clock manufactory is unclear. Hummason owned a water-powered sawmill on Little Yankee Run in the south east corner of Vienna Township close to the Brookfield Township border. Tyler owned property on Warren-Sharon Road at Vienna Center. If located on the Tyler property, this clockmaking concern may have been restricted to assembly rather than shaping the clock parts and works. No date of the business's establishment is available, though Tyler took out a mortgage on Hummason's sawmill site in October, 1825. The business lasted to 1833.[3]

Hummason's career as a clock manufacturer mirrored in many respects those of other Vienna clockmakers. Overextension of credit through mortgages, reduced demand for clocks, and an economic depression in the early 1830s essentially ended the clockmaking "boom" in Vienna and Trumbull County.

Hummason's financial fortunes, tied to his clockmaking ventures, left him destitute. His mother Ann Wheeler Hummason died while applying for pension benefits due her husband Joel Hummason, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Joel J. and his brother Isaac are described as "destitute" in the application and were awarded their later father's pension.